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The five-year-old's father was granted full custody earlier this year and her mother getting weekend visits.

After one visit in June the child was so unwilling to return to her father, who lives a seven-hour drive away, that Air New Zealand refused to let her on the plane.

The mother, trying to comply with the order as best she could, waiting with her daughter to hear from child services officers, but received no word until police arrived.

In another case, a 14-year-old boy was pulled off a couch by two officers while he cried and pleaded with police to let him stay

She has not seen her daughter for 56 days and was not even able to talk to her on her sixth birthday.

In another case, a 14-year-old boy was pulled off a couch by two officers while he cried and pleaded with police to let him stay.

He had just been on an overseas holiday with his father in January and refused to return to his mother, who had primary custody.

'I would have had to physically drag him kicking and screaming into the car, and honestly, I challenge any parent faced with the same situation to have done otherwise - more so with the worry of him possibly attempting to jump from a moving vehicle,' the father told Newsroom.

Police showed up at 8pm and after almost three hours physically dragged him to a car outside where his mother was waiting.

Professor Mark Henaghan, dean of the faculty of law at the University of Otago, said it showed child welfare was no longer a priority for the system

Father and son have not seen each other since and his access was changed from unsupervised to supervised as he breached the parenting order.

Experts were shocked by the footage, calling the uplifting practice 'barbaric', traumatising for the children, and 'state-sponsored abuse'.

NZ Police told Daily Mail Australia welfare considerations were determined by the Family Court, under the Care of Children Act, and police had to enforce them.

'The video is challenging and distressing to watch, and the welfare of the child is always the number one priority,' Inspector Fleur De Bes said.

'Police are not in a position to ignore the enforcement options which may be required arising from a court order.

'Police give careful consideration to when the warrant is executed to ensure that the child is removed without increasing separation trauma.

Deborah Mackenzie, co-founder of violence against women survivors group Backbone Collective, called the practice 'state-sanctioned abuse'

'Police work with the parent who has current custody of the child in an attempt to reduce the distress for all involved.

'We understand some parents may have concerns about specific parenting orders. The Family Court has channels where these can be raised appropriately which also allows for the child’s advocate to hear the child’s voice.'

NZ Justice Ministry said it did not issue warrants to enforce parenting orders lightly and they must meet high standards.

'It must serve the welfare and best interests of the child, and the breach must either be of a serious nature, or the person has a history of breaching parenting orders,' it said.

More than 600 warrants for breaches of parenting orders were issued in New Zealand last year, more than 11 every week, out of 19,000 applications.